Just Mercy Preached on February 2nd, 2020 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scriptures: Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12 Usually our weekly sermon focuses on one of the scriptures for the week. Often that is the Gospel passage alone. But today is a rare occasion when the readings for the day come together to inform the sermon. Not only that, the theme we are going to talk about today, Just Mercy, is the title of a movie currently showing in theaters. Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures for today, from the prophet Micah, asks the question familiar to many of us today: “what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This question is part of a larger argument, in which the prophet stands between God and the people of Israel. The passage imitates the style of a courtroom indictment, in which God accuses the people of transgression. They were entrusted with God’s covenant, the promise of God’s presence and protection. But they have not kept their part of the bargain. They have not been mindful of the poor. The urban elites pretend to be religious, but exploit the vulnerable members of their community, especially women and children. They show no mercy. Micah contrasts their religious acts of making grand offerings and sacrifices to God with what God really wants of them: Justice, loving kindness, a humble walk with God. This is God’s call to the whole community. In our gospel reading from Matthew today, we hear of Jesus’ first teaching. Jesus has called the disciples and begun to heal the sick. Now he begins to teach. He addresses his followers from a mountainside, for what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. He has already told them that the kingdom of God is at hand. Now he shows them how to live into the kingdom. They can take the side of God’s reign, instead of the side of the greater culture, in their case this is the Roman Empire. Jesus tells them that we see God’s reign in the places where we see peacemakers, the merciful, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. These people live as though the reign is already here, and they will recognize the kingdom for what it is when it comes to fruition. A word that repeats in this passage is usually translated as “blessed”. Blessed are the poor in spirit … and so on. But, the translation blessed does not fully express what is conveyed here. Truly, this word really has no one English equivalent. A more accurate translation might be honored. Honored are those who mourn, honored are the meek …. honored are the peacemakers, the merciful and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The qualities of those who are honored are consistent with Micah’s pronouncement. They are qualities of justice and mercy, merciful justice or just mercy. When a community is founded on these qualities, there is a foretaste of God’s reign. “Just Mercy” is a recently released movie. Full disclosure – I have not yet seen it. But I listened to an interview with Bryan Stevenson, the author of the book “Just Mercy” on the NPR show, Fresh Air, broadcast on Martin Luther King Day. I was prompted by the interview to begin reading Bryan Stevenson’s book. The movie, Just Mercy, tells the story of Stevenson’s work as a lawyer, defending Walter McMillian, who is incarcerated on death row in Georgia, wrongly accused of murder. Stevenson is a black American who grew up in a poor rural racially segregated settlement in Delaware. In 1983, he was a first year student at Harvard Law School. During that first year he worried that he had made the wrong choice. He grew disillusioned. “The courses seemed esoteric and disconnected from the race and poverty issues that motivated [him].” [1] Then, while Stevenson was doing a summer internship with the South Prisoners Defense Committee in Georgia, he was sent to visit a condemned man on death row. This visit gave him a renewed sense of purpose. He says “the distance [from the people I would represent] during my first year of law school made me feel lost. Proximity to the condemned, to people unfairly judged; that is what guided me back to something that felt like home.” [2] In 1989 Stevenson founded the organization Equal Justice Initiative. EJI is a nonprofit that “provides legal representation to people who've been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced or abused in state jails and prisons.” EJI has obtained mercy for 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. They’ve won reprieves for hundreds of others who were wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. [3] Stevenson spent over 20 years advocating in the courts. But about 10 years ago he realized that the justice system was changing. The political environment had become divisive and more hostile toward the people he was defending. He saw a direct line between the history of slavery, lynching and segregation of black Americans and current day mass incarceration. He saw the disproportionate number of black American men in prison and on death row as the result of America not dealing with the history of slavery. Stevenson had visited other countries, such as South Africa, Rwanda and Germany. And he noticed that these places had confronted and acknowledged the shameful parts of their history. He noticed that in Germany swastikas were outlawed, whereas in many parts of the US the confederate flag is still displayed. All German school children are taken to the Holocaust Museum. And in Berlin, the former homes of Jewish families who were taken away to concentration camps are marked with commemorative stones. The German people talk about the painful and shameful history of the Holocaust because they want to be sure they never repeat it. I was able to observe a very powerful example of Germany confronting their past when I served as a student chaplain at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale. The larger Hebrew Seniorlife organization works with a German organization called Action Reconciliation. This group sends young German students around the world to immerse in different Jewish communities. Many young German students spend a year abroad through Action Reconciliation before they begin university. At the Hebrew Rehab Center I worked with one of these students. She stayed with a Jewish family and worked in the center, interacting with residents, bringing them in their wheelchairs to concerts and activities. The residents loved this sweet young woman. For some of the more elderly Jewish residents – possibly even Holocaust survivors – this was the first time they had a positive relationship with a German person. This same experience is replicated all over the United States and around the world, as German students travel to meet the Jewish communities that were impacted by the Holocaust. Having seen what was happening in these other countries, Stevenson was convinced that speaking of our racist history and educating America was a necessary step for just mercy. And so the Equal Justice Initiative created a museum and a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. The Legacy Museum “dramatizes racial injustice from enslavement to mass incarceration … The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, is dedicated to the memory of enslaved people and African-Americans terrorized by lynching, racial segregation and Jim Crow.” [4] The museum and memorial are situated on the site of a former slave warehouse and the auction space where enslaved people were sold. Volunteers at the Legacy Museum are invited to go out to the sites of lynchings and collect quantities of soil in jars. There are hundreds of these jars on display in the museum, each with the name of the victim and date the event: Sam Davenport, Lexington Alabama, January 14th 1909 Elizabeth Lawrence, Birmingham AL, July 5th 1933 Unknown, Selma Al, December 12th 1893. [5] Bryan Stevenson sees practice this as redemptive and restorative. Our ministry partner, City Mission, is sponsoring a pilgrimage to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Justice this coming April. You are invited to go! Reading and hearing about Bryan Stevenson’s work has caused me to reflect on my time living in the United States. In 1987 my husband and I arrived in Boston from England and made our home in Cambridge. When we attended church we used the Harvard Law School parking. We were completely oblivious to the fact that a student like Bryan Stevenson was preparing a career seeking reprieves for death row prisoners. I had read “To Kill a Mocking Bird,” by Harper Lee and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou before I came to the US. I thought these books told of long-ago history of segregation and Jim Crow. When an American friend told me that America struggled with racism because they hadn’t gotten over slavery, I thought he was joking. It all seemed so long ago. At the same time, I did not think about the Holocaust survivors who were in our midst at that time. When I walked around Brookline on a Saturday, I noticed the Jewish people walking to temple. But I did not think much about how immigrants from Germany had resettled and found some measure of peace and security after World War II. I needed to listen to Jesus’ teaching a little more closely. To look where he was pointing, when he talked about the blessed or the honored in our midst, because there is the kingdom of God. Church, Just Mercy is an elusive quality, and yet it is there if we are perceptive enough to find it. I am left wondering what it looks like for us, here in Wollaston. Do we go or send students to immerse with the communities of color of the south, worshiping in their churches and serving their elders. Or could we do that here in our own city? Will we participate in “Courageous Conversations Toward Racial Justice” events that are taking place in Milton, and more recently in Quincy? I would love for us have a group outing to Alabama to see the Legacy Museum and Justice Memorial for ourselves, but I doubt that will happen. What can happen, is that we can create a space where God’s justice and mercy, God’s merciful justice, just mercy, may be cultivated and ushered in. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2014), 4. [2] Ibid., 14 [3] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/796234496 [4] Ibid. [5] https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/museum
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